After years of criticism over its collecting practices, Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum is repatriating to Greece three antiquities that are widely regarded to have been looted.
The Atlanta museum said on Monday that it had arranged with the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic to return a Minoan larnax, or coffin; a statue of the muse Terpsichore; and a statue of a seated figure. The returns follow a Chronicle investigation last summer that reported that the three items, plus more than 500 of the Carlos’s artifacts, had passed through owners and sellers linked to the illicit antiquities trade, including some convicted or indicted on charges related to antiquities trafficking.
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After years of criticism over its collecting practices, Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum is repatriating to Greece three antiquities that are widely regarded to have been looted.
The Atlanta museum said on Monday that it had arranged with the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic to return a Minoan larnax, or coffin; a statue of the muse Terpsichore; and a statue of a seated figure. The returns follow a Chronicle investigation last summer that reported that the three items, plus more than 500 of the Carlos’s artifacts, had passed through owners and sellers linked to the illicit antiquities trade, including some convicted or indicted on charges related to antiquities trafficking.
The three artifacts being returned were purchased in the early 2000s in the museum’s effort to bolster its holdings and to rival behemoths like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A mandate to shore up its ancient Greek and Roman collection, in particular, was funded with a $10-million gift from the businessman for whom the Carlos is named. But a longtime curator, Jasper Gaunt, went on a shopping spree so aggressive, experts say, that the institution risked fueling the looting and destruction of archaeological sites.
The Carlos now appears to be looking more closely at what it’s been putting on pedestals. Last year the museum said it was sending back two antiquities to Italy and relinquishing ownership of three others, which are remaining on display as loans from that country.
As for the three Greek antiquities, the museum said that it discussed them with representatives of the Greek government in Athens in April 2023. The museum said that it had been presented with photographic and other evidence indicating that each piece had very likely been illegally excavated.
“The new provenance histories challenge what was known about the pieces at the time the museum acquired them,” the Carlos says on a website about the repatriations.
But outside experts started asking questions about the origins of some of the works more than 15 years ago. They say that the museum has failed to admit how long it took to act on those concerns, and to identify and acknowledge the scholars who raised them.
“People should know the truth, that these are stolen objects. These are looted, stolen, smuggled objects,” said Christos Tsirogiannis, who leads research into illicit antiquities trafficking at Ionian University, in Greece. “And the Carlos Museum — despite the published evidence, and their responsibility to exercise due diligence all these years — they waited.”
In June 2007, Tsirogiannis told the Greek Ministry of Culture that his research strongly indicated that the Terpsichore statue and the larnax had been looted. The statue of the muse, still bearing flecks of paint, had been purchased in 2002 from Robert Hecht, a New York art dealer and a notorious fixture of the illicit antiquities trade. Polaroid photos of the larnax — a bathtub-shaped coffin from the ancient Minoan civilization, also purchased in 2002 — were found by Tsirogiannis in the archive of the convicted antiquities trafficker Gianfranco Becchina. But in August 2007, Bonnie Speed, who was director of the Carlos then, wrote to the Greek Ministry of Culture to say that the pieces had been acquired in compliance with international guidelines and “we have no evidence that the provenance of these pieces is improper,” according to a letter provided by Tsirogiannis.
At the time, Tsirogiannis alleged that another piece in the collection, a massive storage jar called a pithos, had also been looted, citing more photos in Becchina’s archive. In 2008, David Gill, an archaeologist and fellow with the Centre for Heritage at the University of Kent, in England, began blogging about the red flags linked to the Terpsichore, the larnax, and the pithos.
“I am amazed that the Carlos has taken since 2007 to sort out this issue, but has not included the pithos that features so prominently in the Becchina archive,” Gill told TheChronicle by email.
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Laura Diamond, an Emory spokeswoman, said that a Monday news conference “mentioned that communications began in 2007,” though the date is not mentioned in the museum’s news release. “It was the reopening of this communication in 2022 that resulted in the signed agreement, due in large part to developments in Greece during the last decade related to evidence and judicial proceedings,” she said by email.
As for the pithos, Diamond added, both parties “agreed that the evidence was not sufficient to warrant its return.” Neither Speed nor Gaunt immediately responded to requests for comment.
In November, Tsirogiannis went public with concerns about yet another piece: the seated, headless marble figure that the museum is now repatriating. The Carlos bought it in 2003 from Michael Ward, a New York dealer who was convicted last yearof criminal facilitation, and who provided no provenance information at the time of purchase, according to the museum. The museum says that it was presented with evidence in 2022 that Becchina was convicted of trafficking the statue by a Greek court in 2017, and that it has also seen a Polaroid taken in 1989 of the sculpture “either in the process of being removed from the ground or being stored outside.”
In a statement, Henry S. Kim, the Carlos’s director since 2022, called the repatriations the beginning of “many years of expanded cultural cooperation between the Ministry and Emory.” The deal struck by the two parties will create opportunities for Emory students, faculty, and staff to take part in excavations in Greece, and for the Carlos to team up with museums in Greece on loans and exhibitions, according to the museum.
“We hope that other museums abroad will follow the example of the Carlos Museum, which has sought to solve the problem through dialogue and a spirit of cooperation,” said Lina Mendoni, Greece’s minister of culture.
But Cynthia Patterson, an emeritus professor of history at Emory, said she was disappointed that the museum was not being more forthcoming about its failures over the decades to vet the beautiful objects it was snapping up.
“To acquire these objects ethically, they needed to do ‘due diligence,’ which was clearly not done,” she said by email. “Emory students and the Emory community deserve a full and open accounting of past acquisitions of the Carlos Museum’s extensive purchases from the antiquities market.”
Tsirogiannis said he was “very happy” to see his work finally paying off years later — “and for my country, of course.” But, he added, there are plenty of other questionable objects that the Carlos has yet to acknowledge.
“There was no thorough research on provenance before acquisition, there was no due diligence, they were buying objects that they knew were basically unprovenanced,” Tsirogiannis said. “And now they have started only paying the price.”
Stephanie M. Lee is a senior writer at The Chronicle covering research and society. Follow her on Twitter at @stephaniemlee, or email her at stephanie.lee@chronicle.com.